Its a concept I've struggled to understand despite watching every tutorial on there, it seems that most of them choose to use small scale stuff to teach you the concept and I've only seen the one by TopHattWaffle that actually does a good job of using it in a map. Thats what I'm asking for, some examples of how people have used hint and skip brushes to optimize their map well; especially in very open areas.
Here is how I've used it in my current map project, I figure its probably pretty bad but thats how I understand it.
[t]http://i.gyazo.com/c82e361eca392a4d7fa15e4b450b5d08.png[/t]
Currently none of those hints are helping much, since they all extend way above the rooftops of the buildings. If you add a horizontal hint coplanar with the lowest roof you'll get the effect you're looking for. As for learning how to use hints in maps, the best way to learn is to decompile HL2 maps (TF2 also comes with sdk_[mapname].vmf's which are excellent resources as well).
[video=youtube;Ne59X-e-R9Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne59X-e-R9Y[/video]
Cant post youtube video for some reason
[QUOTE=Sprelle;45819110][video=youtube;Ne59X-e-R9Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne59X-e-R9Y[/video]
Cant post youtube video for some reason[/QUOTE]
Thank you but I said I wanted some examples of the brushes in use, I've seen that video dozens of times and its not 'clicking' for me
[editline]27th August 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=seba079;45818892]Currently none of those hints are helping much, since they all extend way above the rooftops of the buildings. If you add a horizontal hint coplanar with the lowest roof you'll get the effect you're looking for. As for learning how to use hints in maps, the best way to learn is to decompile HL2 maps (TF2 also comes with sdk_[mapname].vmf's which are excellent resources as well).[/QUOTE]
So a large horizontal brush that extends across the entire map from the lowest height? Even clipping through buildings? Thanks
[QUOTE=Exho;45819486]So a large horizontal brush that extends across the entire map from the lowest height? Even clipping through buildings? Thanks[/QUOTE]
Yeah. Here's something to clarify.
Let's say this is what you're starting out with:
[t]http://i.imgur.com/gru1D7A.png[/t]
and a quick compile gives this (the roof additions are func_detail, since they definitely won't block visibility):
[t]http://i.imgur.com/Hlw3dKL.png[/t]
You can optimise the corners using diagonal brushes, like you already have.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/TuqoyI9.png[/t]
However, as you can see, there are no horizontal cuts except the ones done by buildings, and those stop at the default 1024 leaves. Because of this a lot of leaves can 'see' other leaves just because they're very tall. This can be remedied by putting a large, map-covering (in my example) hint at the height of the lowest roof (ignoring the func_details of course, because they don't affect leaf cuts).
[t]http://i.imgur.com/vViajkz.png[/t]
Now the diagonal hints really get their money's worth, since every ground-level leaf only reaches the top of the lowest leaf-cutting object and the leaves the players will be in most of the time can't 'see' into each other.
Thank you very much! This makes sense to me and I will work on improving my visleaves. Should I be worried about making too many cuts or is that not an issue?
[QUOTE=Exho;45824443]Thank you very much! This makes sense to me and I will work on improving my visleaves. Should I be worried about making too many cuts or is that not an issue?[/QUOTE]
Assuming you cut responsibly it should not be a problem; if it does then you can use a func_viscluster to "skip" the vis-checking pass on the visleaves it touches.
I would suggest playing around on a test map with mat_leafvis 3 and seeing how and what the effects are: one you understand how it works optimization is fairly easy.
The number of leaves only affects compile time, not ingame performance. However, like glitchvid said, it can't hurt to help VVIS a bit with visclusters and the like.
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